With the introduction of multi-channel video, Electronic Program Guides (EPGs) were developed to assist the consumer with navigating the ‘500 Channel’ universe. These allowed features such as grouping of similarly themed programming, look ahead (and often marking for recording), navigating by Favorite Channels, etc. EPGs typically give access to currently showing, and shortly upcoming linear television programming.
With the rise of Video-On-Demand (VOD), EPGs have needed to toggle between VOD offerings and linear offerings. These have been somewhat of a compromise because prerecorded material offered through a VOD service cannot be selected directly through the EPG listings for linear channels. In addition to this, the VOD selection mechanisms are often modeled as hierarchical menu selection structures, and with the steady increase of content available through VOD servers, this makes it increasingly difficult for consumers to navigate all available content.
Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) have had a similar effect: programming available on PVR is typically presented separate from the linear programming and even from the programming available on VOD, so in order to browse all available programming consumers effectively “toggle” between linear programming, VOD programming, and PVR programming.
Accordingly, there is a need to be able to tie these technologies together to enable the consumer to browse and search available programming content using metadata values in a consistent manner, and to represent the metadata in an intuitive way so that it is easy to relate them to the programming content. The invention is meant as an extension to current EPG capabilities, to make it easier to find relevant content.